standing, every individual knows his place in the social scale and
never thinks of leaving it. He represents a fixed function or element
in the general organism, and holds to it as a matter of course, just
as, in the human body, the body does not aspire to be the head, nor
the liver or heart to take the place of lungs or stomach. The laborer
looks back upon an ancestry of laborers; the shopkeeper has been a
shopkeeper for unnumbered generations; the artisan on the bench to-day
does the same work that his father and grandfathers did before him;
the noble inherits his acres as inevitably as the sun rises, and sits
in the House of Lords by immemorial usage and privilege. Social
position all along the line being thus anchored in the nature of
things, as it were, there is no anxiety on any one's part as to
maintaining his status. He is secure where he is, and nothing and
nobody can change him. There is no individual striving to rise nor
fear to fall. Consequently there can and must be entire freedom of
mutual conversation; the marquis with a revenue of half a million a
year meets as an equal his gardener who gets ten pounds a month, and
the tailor in his measuring-room offers a glass of sherry to his noble
patron who comes to him for a new coat. Each is at his ease,
conscious that he performs a use and fills a place which no one else
can fill or perform, and that nothing else matters. The population is
a vast mutual-benefit association, without envy on the one side or
contempt on the other. And social existence moves as smoothly as a
well-oiled and adjusted machine.

This agreeable condition is impossible in a democracy--at all events,
in a democracy like ours, which is based upon the assumption that all
men are equal. Nevertheless, we are on the right track, and the
English are on the wrong one; for the agreeable English system
obstructs the insensible infiltration of fresh material into old